Abid Husain on our culture

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Abid Husain on our culture

By M.V. Kamath

 

It requires an extraordinarily brave and an unbelievably perceptive

scholar to write a book on the national culture of India. To our good

fortune, S. Abid Husain is both. As a country India is unique. It has

a history going back to over 5,000 years. It has a people who speak

more than 20 languages and goodness alone knows how many dialects.

The people are a fantastic mix of religions and languages, castes,

creeds and cults, races and rivalries, such as are found in no other

country in the world. Not in Europe, nor in Russia, not in China

spread as it is and certainly not anywhere in both the Americas,

North and South. In every way India is unique, one without a second.

And yet, avers Abid Husain "a common history exists in India to a

higher degree than in many countries of the world".

 

That is clearly an understatement. Actually, there is no comparable

country anywhere in the globe. That is its essential strength.

Subjected to invasions of various strengths over varied periods of

time, India has retained its essential unity and evolved what may

truly be called a national culture". Writes Abid Husain: "India's

cultural history of several thousand years shows that the subtle but

strong threads of unity which runs through the infinite multiplicity

of her life, was not woven by stress or pressure of power groups but

the vision of seers, the vigil of saints, the speculation of

philosophers and the imagination of poets and artists and that these

are the only means which can be used to make this national unity

wider, stronger and more lasting. This book has been written to tell

this simple truth". And brilliantly written it is.

 

Originally written in Urdu, it was subsequently translated into

English, edited, revised, updated and refined and such has been its

popularity that it has gone into 10 editions. No wonder. Starting

with the coming of the Aryans—Abid Husain does not bother to deal

with the controversy over the `Aryan' invasion, except to say

that "about 2,000 BC the Indus Valley Civilisation was being

destroyed in northwest India by the ravage of wild invaders"—the

author moves on to cover the centuries ending with the Mughal period

and then proceeds to discuss how, with the advent of the British, the

dominant position of western culture resulted in pushing the national

culture into the background".

 

How did Islamic forces conquer North India so easily? Says Abid

Husain: "The division of Hindu society into castes and sub-castes had

passed all reasonable limits. Nobody could work for the unity of

India in such an atmosphere". It was that disintegration that gave

Muslim invaders the opportunity to conquer India.

 

Abid Husain avers that the "contact of Indian culture with that of

the West failed to produce any new fusion which could provide the

basis of a new national culture"— an assertion, one suspects, that is

debatable. But to begin at the beginning: The author starts with a

study of the Indus Valley culture which he describes as `the fountain-

head", goes on to describe the two `streams' of `Dravidian'

and `Vedic' cultures, moves on to assess what he describes as the

two `confluences', `Vedic Hindu' and `Puranic Hindu', interspersing

his study with an analysis of Buddhism, Jainism and the Great Epics

until he comes to 300 years after Harsha, "a period of political

disintegration and intellectual stagnation", followed by advaita,

bhakti and Rajput culture and the arrival of Islam in the South.

 

How did Islamic forces conquer North India so easily? Says Abid

Husain: "The division of Hindu society into castes and sub-castes had

passed all reasonable limits. Nobody could work for the unity of

India in such an atmosphere". It was that disintegration that gave

Muslim invaders the opportunity to conquer India.

 

How that hostility was overcome, how "the third confluence"—the

creation of `the Hindustani culture'—came into being, how the design

of the Jama Masjid in Ajmer was taken from the Jain temple on Mount

Abu and in `general conception' the Qutub Minar bears a "resemblance

to the pillars of the Gupta era", how "numerous translations from

Sanskrit into Persian were done exclusively by Hindus" is discussed

in great detail.

 

Then comes a study of the impact of `English culture', for what it

is, on India considering that up to 1773 the presence of the English

in India "had been no better than a band of ruthless commercial

brigands to whom culture was an unknown commodity". Abid Husain

pointedly notes that what was set up by the British in India " was

not state at all but a subordinate administration without sovereign

powers".

 

It is not that the author is unmindful of the forces of

disintegration in India to which he gives sufficient space. But he

insists that "though the variety of languages in India is as great as

in Europe and that of dress, food and the general mode of living is

greater, the community of spiritual and moral ideas and social

institutions has given India an inner unity unknown to Europe".

Husain also concedes that "influences of modern western culture also

provide a common element in the thought and life of the educated

class and serve as a valuable unifying force". Particularly edifying

is the last but one chapter on prospects of cultural unity in India,

which he says should aim "not at absolute uniformity, but at a

perfect harmony of a variety of regional and sectional cultures". The

ideal should be broad-based and blending "into a harmonious whole the

best elements in our cultural heritage of the Vedic Hindu, Buddhist,

Puranic Hindu and Mughal Hindustani cultures, as well as the best of

what we have received and can receive from modern western culture".

 

The last chapter on "Towards a new national culture" should be must

reading to one and all, considering that Abid Husain shows how a new

cultural synthesis is not only possible but necessary and should be

consciously attempted, not by any government but by "private

individuals and institutions", by striking a balance "between the

static and the dynamic, the old and the new". Very well said, and

words to be remembered. The synthesis of culture is a never-ending

process which is both a challenge and an imperative. India has done

it before. It can do it again. Therein lies its strength—and its

greatness.

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